Solitary

I've spent most of the pandemic in a small room on my own. It occured to me that it's like being in solitary confinement. I found...

A Sourcebook on Solitary Confinement

...which lists the psychological effects of solitary confinement in prison. Let's see if my intuition was accurate by going through the headings.

Anxiety

Yep. I've never had to deal with this before, and didn't really understand it. Now I know how a panic attack feels.

Depression

Yes, but... this hasn't got worse. I think it's more frequent, but it hasn't got more severe.

Anger

Some. I wouldn't have said this was really an issue, but listed under this heading was poor impulse control, and I've definitely struggled with that.

Cognitive disturbances

This is the big one. Here's the subheadings from the sourcebook:

Short attention span

Poor concentration

Poor memory

Confused thought processes; disorientation.

Yep, had all of those to the extent that some days I can do exactly nothing.

Perceptual distortions

Nope. Scary stuff that I'm happy I haven't had to deal with.

Paranoia and Psychosis

I would say no, but this includes "ruminations" and I've had a metric shit ton of those, none of which were helpful or positive.

Conclusion

It could have been a lot worse. I haven't actually been in solitary. I've only had the taster experience, and that was bad enough.

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